Catherine was not so much engaged at the theatre that evening,
in returning the nods and smiles of Miss Thorpe, though they
certainly claimed much of her leisure, as to forget to look with an
inquiring eye for Mr. Tilney in every box which her eye could
reach; but she looked in vain. Mr. Tilney was no fonder of the play
than the pump–room. She hoped to be more fortunate the next
day; and when her wishes for fine weather were answered by seeing a
beautiful morning, she hardly felt a doubt of it; for a fine Sunday
in Bath empties every house of its inhabitants, and all the world
appears on such an occasion to walk about and tell their
acquaintance what a charming day it is.

As soon as divine service was over, the Thorpes and Allens
eagerly joined each other; and after staying long enough in the
pump–room to discover that the crowd was insupportable, and
that there was not a genteel face to be seen, which everybody
discovers every Sunday throughout the season, they hastened away to
the Crescent, to breathe the fresh air of better company. Here
Catherine and Isabella, arm in arm, again tasted the sweets of
friendship in an unreserved conversation; they talked much, and
with much enjoyment; but again was Catherine disappointed in her
hope of reseeing her partner. He was nowhere to be met with; every
search for him was equally unsuccessful, in morning lounges or
evening assemblies; neither at the Upper nor Lower Rooms, at
dressed or undressed balls, was he perceivable; nor among the
walkers, the horsemen, or the curricle–drivers of the
morning. His name was not in the pump–room book, and
curiosity could do no more. He must be gone from Bath. Yet he had
not mentioned that his stay would be so short! This sort of
mysteriousness, which is always so becoming in a hero, threw a
fresh grace in Catherine’s imagination around his person and
manners, and increased her anxiety to know more of him. From the
Thorpes she could learn nothing, for they had been only two days in
Bath before they met with Mrs. Allen. It was a subject, however, in
which she often indulged with her fair friend, from whom she
received every possible encouragement to continue to think of him;
and his impression on her fancy was not suffered therefore to
weaken. Isabella was very sure that he must be a charming young
man, and was equally sure that he must have been delighted with her
dear Catherine, and would therefore shortly return. She liked him
the better for being a clergyman, “for she must confess
herself very partial to the profession”; and something like a
sigh escaped her as she said it. Perhaps Catherine was wrong in not
demanding the cause of that gentle emotion — but she was not
experienced enough in the finesse of love, or the duties of
friendship, to know when delicate raillery was properly called for,
or when a confidence should be forced.

Mrs. Allen was now quite happy — quite satisfied with
Bath. She had found some acquaintance, had been so lucky too as to
find in them the family of a most worthy old friend; and, as the
completion of good fortune, had found these friends by no means so
expensively dressed as herself. Her daily expressions were no
longer, “I wish we had some acquaintance in Bath!” They
were changed into, “How glad I am we have met with Mrs.
Thorpe!” and she was as eager in promoting the intercourse of
the two families, as her young charge and Isabella themselves could
be; never satisfied with the day unless she spent the chief of it
by the side of Mrs. Thorpe, in what they called conversation, but
in which there was scarcely ever any exchange of opinion, and not
often any resemblance of subject, for Mrs. Thorpe talked chiefly of
her children, and Mrs. Allen of her gowns.

The progress of the friendship between Catherine and Isabella
was quick as its beginning had been warm, and they passed so
rapidly through every gradation of increasing tenderness that there
was shortly no fresh proof of it to be given to their friends or
themselves. They called each other by their Christian name, were
always arm in arm when they walked, pinned up each other’s
train for the dance, and were not to be divided in the set; and if
a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still
resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut
themselves up, to read novels together. Yes, novels; for I will not
adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with
novel–writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the
very performances, to the number of which they are themselves
adding — joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the
harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them
to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a
novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas!
If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of
another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot
approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such
effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to
talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now
groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body.
Although our productions have afforded more extensive and
unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in
the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From
pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our
readers. And while the abilities of the nine–hundredth
abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and
publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior,
with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are
eulogized by a thousand pens — there seems almost a general
wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the
novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius,
wit, and taste to recommend them. “I am no novel–reader
— I seldom look into novels — Do not imagine that I
often read novels — It is really very well for a
novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you
reading, Miss — ?” “Oh! It is only a
novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book
with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only
Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some
work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in
which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest
delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and
humour, are conveyed to the world in the best–chosen
language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume
of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she
have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must
be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous
publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust
a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often
consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural
characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern
anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to
give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.